


Inked, unbound souls

by Clementive



Series: Marked and Bound [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Tattoo Parlor, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Angst, F/M, History Professor Tenten (Naruto), Magical Realism, Mutually Unrequited, Reincarnation, Romantic Soulmates, Sai (Naruto)-centric, Sai can't deal with his emotions and that's how we like it, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Supernatural Elements, Tattoo Artist Sai (Naruto), Tattoos, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 14:22:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29902425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clementive/pseuds/Clementive
Summary: Sai meets his soulmate at his tattoo parlour, or so he thinks.
Relationships: Sai/Tenten (Naruto)
Series: Marked and Bound [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2198691
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	Inked, unbound souls

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Tenten Week (Happy birthday, Tenten!) and March Madness, prompts: Reincarnation + Soulmate

He saw a spark, but nothing ignited. 

Sai lowered the overhead lamp to her back. The light was close, too close; her skin appeared translucent, bluish. With gloved hands, he touched her back, nodding to himself, then shaking his head. A trick of the light.

He turned back toward the design they had agreed on over emails. The dragon's mouth was gaping open, black scales shining, yellow eyes peering through the fog, and its tail curled beyond the dragon's claws. He inclined his head, still hunting for the spark, fire. He touched the curve of her back again. 

She didn't even flinch. She looked at him with disinterest, her eyes wide and dark, dull. Her face flickered back and forth, fading, uninteresting, too angular and sharp to be beautiful, and too smooth to be ugly. Sai thought she was forgettable as a piece of art. Even her design was uninspired, gaping, torn by teeth and claws, more offence than defence. Utterly unbalanced. 

Sai smiled at her, tapping on the place of her back where he would start. He tried to remember her name. Tenshi? No. Tenten. 

"I don't think design will be distorted too much by the curve of your back."

"Good," she said simply and repositioned her hands under her head. 

Sai rolled his stool away from her to reach his working table. He tore open the package that contained the needle and fixed it to his tattoo machine. His fingers curled familiarly around the weight of the applicator as he set the cartridge. 

He lifted up his gaze to look at her. Her face muddled, shifted, dark, then light, and the more he looked at her face, the more he forgot its shape, the line of her nose, the thinness of her lips.

What was her name again?

' _Tenten_ ', he thought again, and her name floated, oily, in his mind. 

"Ready?" Sai asked and smiled. 

He always smiled when he found them ugly.

"Are you?" Tenten replied, her chin now resting against her hand, and he missed the challenge in her eyes.

He rolled his chair back toward her and stopped at the level of her armpit. He pressed on her shoulder blade to stretch the skin. 

"Ready?" he asked again and started the machine. 

She didn't flinch. She didn't close her eyes. She trailed her gaze up and down the wall where he displayed his designs, and didn't move. Ink dripped inside her pores, and Sai thought he saw the skin swallowing. He pressed harder than he normally did, sweat forming on his brows. The ink seemed to curl away from the tip to the needle, refusing to stick. It dripped and dripped, missing its marks, never biting or binding to the skin. 

Sai stopped, pressing the towel to her skin. It had reddened, but the lines Sai traced had started to fade. He touched her skin, stretching his black gloved fingers over it. He could see faint white lines where needle met skin.

He removed the cartridge and reached for a new one, faintly trembling. 

He smiled harder. 

"I apologize, I needed to change the cartridge. I thought there was more than that left."

He fixed the new cartridge of ink, breathing hard.

Her skin showed nothing.

Sai held the needle over her skin, hesitating. Her back was a canvas of spilled ink, gathered in its centre and drenching the towel he had left there, everything black and liquid and slipping. He wiped her back with a second towel, leaving a blackish residue behind. 

He stilled. 

There was a spark, a flash, and he pushed the light away, fumbling to his feet. Tenten half-raised, hand against cheek, her other arm holding her shirt to her chest. The beginning of her tattoo stretched like tentacles in the darkness, just like he had traced it. 

Sai smiled at her, terrified.

"Are you one of those tattoo artists who can cover a soulmate mark?" she asked softly after a moment, and his eyes darted to her face. 

"It's illegal." He smiled, carefully, contained. 

Sai didn't like his emotions running wild. He didn't like his heartbeat filling his mind, vibrating louder than his tattoo machine. He felt like he was bleeding ink, through his eyes, through his pores, whenever he felt anything too strongly.

Like now. 

He touched her skin, leaning in close enough to block off the light, and the ink gleamed fresh, the beginning of the dragon's eye. He blinked. The ink remained. 

"Lie down," he said and pressed on her back, so she would lower herself back on his chair. 

She let him.

He felt _that_. She was humouring him. She was pretending, absurd, and oh-so ugly, marked by ink, yet unbound to it. Her name oscillated, swing in and out of reach. 

"I know it's illegal," Tenten continued aimlessly, and the stabbing sound of the tattoo machine didn't drown her. Just as it didn't drown her in ink. "I always wanted a ridiculously elaborate tattoo, because I've the most boring of all the soulmate marks."

"Once you bind, it'll disappear," Sai kept his voice kept light. 

She groaned, and he paused while she shifted, rearranging her position.

"Don't move," he said, with icy pleasantness. 

He felt too much. He felt sparks, igniting in his gut, intertwined fury and fear. He started the machine again and it drowned everything that bubbled and boiled inside of him. Why couldn't it drown _her_? He tattooed her in practiced long strokes like he was painting. He tattooed her in darkness, like he was burying her. 

And she slipped, non-existent, uninteresting. Ugly. Tenshi? Tenten?

"Are you bound?" she asked suddenly, and he pressed the needle harder on her skin. 

_Tenten_. 

She didn't react.

"No," Sai replied mutely.

He was always afraid to feel too much. He was always afraid to compare ink to ink and find that he still hadn't found his family. 

"How long do you think it'll last?" Tenten sighed and craned her neck to look at him.

Sai blinked, pausing again, and the corner of his eyes crinkled. 

"This session," she clarified. "I'm teaching a class tomorrow morning and I need to go over my presentation one last time."

"Two more hours to finish the outline," he answered mechanically and smiled. "What do you teach?"

She smiled, languid, crude features in pooling darkness. Her eyes shone like mirrors, reflecting the deep colour of his. He tried to concentrate. Brown. Were they brown, her eyes? Grey, maybe? He shook himself, bending over ink, tracing deeper lines to finish the outline of her dragon. 

"We don't have to chitchat if you prefer to work in silence."

"You don't seem like a teacher," Sai offered with an apologetic smile. 

He almost told her that she looked like nothing. Like everything. Brown or grey eyes, he couldn't even decide. And her name. He had lost it again. 

"I'm a prof, actually," she clarified cheerfully. Fake, Sai decided. "I teach War History. Things like military strategies, weapons, technology advancement," she paused, hissing. He looked up at her, wondering if she was finally feeling pain. Her smile was glacial, her eyes rounded in excitement. She had laughed, Sai realized, pale, and blinking. She hadn't hissed, she had laughed.

It was within reach again, ' _Tenten_ ', a name that meant both nothing and everything. A number or heaven. 

"Some techniques to wield metal are lost, you know? All we have is a blade and no way to replicate it," Tenten rambled on. 

"Why the dragon, then?" he asked stiffly, and he felt her eyes on her. "Why not a weapon?"

"Because that's what it should have been."

"Hm?"

"My soulmate mark."

Sai smiled, bent over his work. His mouth, his jaw hurt. It was taking shape too slowly, he found. He wiped at the skin, and the new towel was heavy, sticky, completely black. Again. The parts of her skin still in strong light showed no ink. He pushed the lamp out of the way, trying to see the tattoo as a whole.

The light vacillated behind him.

Tenten chewed on her gum, barely noticing.

The tattoo still missed its claws, tails and teeth. It was all clearer in the darkness. Her tattoo. Her name. Her. 

"You know, it shows when you don't mean your smile. Your eyes crinkle until they disappear. It doesn't look effortless. It looks pained," she said, dismissive, and her fingertips traced the edge of the chair. Her shoulder blades raised and faded. The dragon snapped opened his jaw, reaching past the skin with her movements. Then, it was once more flat, unimpressive, missing parts. 

The tattoo machine hovered near her skin. Sai licked his parched lips, his face chalk white. 

"Don't move," he said curtly, his smile briefly forgotten. 

"Sorry."

The machine buzzed, its rhythm both strident and familiar. Appeasing. It built up, his anger, played with it, until it was elastic and worn and manageable. Contained, just beneath his skin. 

"You're not the only one who comes here and thinks they should have had this or that mark," he said with a smile and swept across the skin forming the claws. "You're nothing special."

She smiled, mostly teeth, and the rest of her face faded to black. She wobbled, her edges in sparks. 

"I never pretended to be unique. We come in pairs, no?"

He traced another claw, carefully, avoiding her smile. She smiled, unprompted, unhinged, completely free. Completely careless. She smiled like it would burden her not to, yet all he could see were the claws. Her teeth. 

"It feels like a mistake," Tenten added softly almost like a purr and her teeth grew, sharpened. "Like someone accidentally dropped ink on me. It's just one drop."

He froze. Sweat poured down his face. The machine buzzed, vibrating uselessly in his hand. His eyes moved to his right gloved hand, where his own soulmate mark was.

"What is it?" she asked and her face was back. 

And she raised a brow. 

And she was shrouded in darkness, pulling at it like a blanket, and her frown distorted her face, and her back gleamed beneath the ink. 

And, and, _and_. He found it hard to breathe, so close to her, accumulating more 'and's', more emotions, than he found comfortable.

"Are you okay?"

"This is a sensitive area," Sai said mechanically and smiled before he started tracing again. 

"Ah."

Sai felt like he was on the edge of a precipice, and he wanted to toe the line, stay put, ignore the constant stream of emotions inside. 

"Yes, I suppose it is tender," she said dully, detached, and he wondered if she felt anything at all, slippery like she was.

"This isn't your first tattoo," he remarked in spite of himself. 

"No," she smiled, crooked.

"Your smile is terrible."

It widened. 

"Thank you."

They didn't speak afterward. It took him almost three more hours to complete the outline. He wrapped plastic around the blotched skin, tight, afraid the ink would slide out of boundaries when she stood, when she walked in the light. Afraid of her. He watched her like an hawk, consumed, his palms slick in his gloves. He started cleaning up his station, explaining in a low voice that she should avoid wearing a bra until her tattoo healed. 

She yawned and stretched as he droned on how to take care of her tattoo until her next session.

"Thank you," she said once he was done.

His back to her, he heard the rustle of fabric and the squeaking of his chair as she put back her shirt on.

"I'll write up your receipt."

She nodded to herself, catching the light. She looked around her, frowning. 

"God, I didn't realize how dark it was," she laughed and grabbed her purse off the floor. 

Sai disappeared behind the curtain leading to the back room of his shop. He gulped some water, thinking hard. There was a moment where he forgot her, where he was about to sit at his desk and never return to the front of the shop. Then, she cleared her throat and it came back full force: her soulmate mark, his, her name. Her. Her. _Her_.

 _Tenten_.

Sai reentered the room and slipped behind the counter. He wrote quietly the amount they had settled on for the first session on her bill and slid it across the counter. 

"Why are you smiling like that?" She raised a brow at him. 

He reached for her credit card, and she held onto it, her gaze clashing with his.

"Like what?" he asked, smiling wider. 

Tenten stared at him hard, applying pressure the same way he had pressed onto her skin. With a flick of her wrist, she released her credit card. He almost stumbled back.

"I can't really tell what you're thinking, but we're going to spend another twenty hours or so together, so I find it aggravating when you look this disgusted with me."

 _Now_ , she spoke like a professor, Sai thought. Her face dripped through his thoughts, watered down ink. He tried to focus on the tip of her nose, but he lost it. He lost her. 

Tenshi? Tenten?

"Just say whatever you're thinking," Tenten continued firmly, and Sai thought this woman had no defence strategies, only offence. She offered no peace, only war.

He hated it, how he bent under her stare, the roughness of her, 

"I'm angry you aren't looking for me," Sai choked out. 

He ripped out his gloves to show him his right hand. 

She frowned.

"I'm angry it's someone like you. My soulmate."

Her eyes darted to his hand, the blotch of ink, and he hunted her reaction across fleeing shadows and fleeting features. He tried to focus and see her. See his soulmate. She tilted her head to the side, her mouth carefully stretching as if she was weighing her words or arguing with herself. Sai couldn't tell. He couldn't tell anything about her, except that she rejected him. Them. She rejected them, together.

He felt so vulnerable, so desperate, so angry that it was her. 

"That is nothing like my mark," Tenten said finally, and she lifted her gaze to meet his. "I'm sorry," she added through thin lips, almost dazed. 

"Don't come back," Sai sputtered and fell heavily on his stool.

The bell above the door rang well after she was gone.

He dropped his head in his hands, his blood pulsing against his skin. Somehow he knew it wasn't her, his soulmate. Yet, there was a part of him that craved a bond with someone, finally. Completely. And this part of him believed he had accidentally dropped ink on her in another life, in another world. 

He massaged his hand, his thumb rolling the skin of his own soulmate mark, a perfect circle. 

There was nothing accidental about this dot of ink.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm gonna fill that relationship tag like it's my job. It feels nice to feel motivated to write again, so y'know. There'll be other parts.


End file.
